


Cherish Harder

by CatKing_Catkin



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Anime Is Real, Bad Cooking, Cooking Lessons, Developing Friendships, Developing Relationship, Dogs, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fights, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Introspection, Light Angst, Male-Female Friendship, Pre-Canon, Protective Sans, Protective Undyne
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-27
Updated: 2015-10-27
Packaged: 2018-04-28 12:32:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5090867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatKing_Catkin/pseuds/CatKing_Catkin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Takes place before the events of the game. </p><p>Papyrus has taken it into his head that joining the Royal Guard is his path to friends and popularity. Undyne is more convinced by the day that joining the Royal Guard is not for him. She realizes that she's come to like having him around, so that means it would only suck more if he got himself killed by a human. Sometimes, being a hero means making the hard choices.</p><p>Still, sending him away only leaves her feeling worse about things. With a little help from her favorite nerdy scientist and Papyrus' weird brother, Undyne learns that the strength to fight is not all there is to life, and that even heroes are allowed to have friends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cherish Harder

**Author's Note:**

> The initial prompt for this was from dr4conianlaw on tumblr: "papyrus was feeling sad b4 the human arrived?? undyne tries to cheer up her normally very cheery buddy??" Things spiraled out from there, as they tend to when I get prompts. And this, admittedly, was kind of the only way I could think of to make Papyrus sad, but rest assured - much cheering up happens in the end. 
> 
> This is also the first fic I've written where Undyne appears, let alone taking place inside Undyne's head. It was an interesting challenge, gotta admit, but also pretty fun. Spending a lot of time in Undyne's head is much like becoming one with a battering ram, but also left me feeling pretty upbeat. So hopefully I'll be able to write more of her in future.

_This is not going to work_.

It was a thought she’d been trying to avoid for a while.  But somehow, today, as she watched Papyrus enthusiastically petting Greater Dog into submission, she found that she couldn’t avoid it any longer. As usual, they were training in Waterfall. Despite the fact that the dogs and Papyrus lived in Snowdin, Undyne hated the cold. As the leader, what she said was what was done. So here she was, watching from the bank as the dog and the skeleton sent up little splashes of water from the shallow pool they "fought" in. 

He wanted so much to be in the Royal Guard. Undyne had never known anyone who clearly wanted it so much, besides maybe herself. Most of the dogs were only in it because their parents had been. Yet somehow, Papyrus had taken it into his head that there was no other path for him in life.

It wasn’t that he wasn’t tough enough. He could give all the dogs a good fight. He could even make Undyne sweat a little. But somehow, he never managed to _anticipate_ an attack. The first strike anyone launched at him always hit the mark. Sometimes the second and third would, too. That in and of itself wasn’t an insurmountable obstacle when he was only fighting monsters, of course, but the Royal Guard had been formed to fight _humans_. Against the wrong human, one attack could be all it took.

Undyne fought to save her fellow monsters from bloodshed, not send them walking off into it. He was technically only a warrior in training, of course, but that couldn’t last forever. Eventually, he’d have to realize that, too.

Wouldn’t he?

“All right, that’s enough!” she barked. Both opponents looked up at her in surprise, before Greater Dog went through the laborious process of rolling itself off its back and back to its feet. Papyrus merely straightened up and dusted himself off, pausing only for a moment to make a face at the drool and teeth marks that had been left on one ulna when he hadn’t been paying attention.

 _He never pays attention_. She tried to stay sharp at the thought, if only to ignore the uncomfortable note of concern in the pit of her stomach that accompanied it. _One of these days, it’s not going to be a dog._

Still, he snapped into a salute when she strode over to stand before them. Greater Dog just tilted its head, tongue lolling, to watch her curiously.

“DID I WIN?” the skeleton asked brightly.

Greater Dog let out a yap, tail beginning to wag enthusiastically in apparent support of its sparring partner. Undyne just gave it a very pointed look, which left it trying to burrow safely down into its own armor instead.

Even Papyrus couldn’t fail to notice this. Even he looked somewhat uneasy when she looked back at him and said, simply: “Hey. Let’s take a walk.”

Greater Dog poked its snout back up over the rim of its armor, doleful black eyes focused on Papyrus. He patted it on the head, and it licked his cheek, before withdrawing once more. But then, like the good soldier he so earnestly aspired to be, Papyrus fell into step just a pace behind her as Undyne turned on her heel and walked away from the training yard.

 _Lesser Dog likes him, too_ , she remembered. _01 and 02 don’t seem to mind him. Okay, they started off liking his brother, but he made introductions and now they all get on okay. Even if the dogs keep trying to play fetch with pieces of him, he doesn’t seem to mind._ Teamwork was important, in an organization like theirs’. The team had certainly become a lot livelier since he’d started training.

 _But they can go in for the kill, if they have to._ Papyrus, she was becoming increasingly sure, just didn’t have it in him. Undyne could tell a lot about a person, just from fighting them. He was a strong fighter, an undeniably good person, exactly the sort of person she fought to _protect_ , but…

“I DIDN’T WIN, DID I?”

Undyne stopped in her tracks. She drew in a deep breath and let it out, leaving her shoulders slumped. “It’s not like that, Papyrus.”

Hastily, he scrambled around from behind her to stand in front of her instead. His hands were held out beseechingly, a pleading look on his face.

“NYOO-HOO-HOO! YOU’RE DISAPPOINTED IN ME! I DIDN’T DO A GOOD JOB! I CAN TELL! PLEASE DON’T BE DISAPPOINTED IN ME, UNDYNE! TELL ME WHAT I CAN DO TO IMPRESS YOU! THAT’S ALL I WANT!”

“And that’s the _problem!_ ”

Papyrus drew up straight, as though he’d just been slapped across the skull. Undyne’s fingers flexed and itched with the urge to do just that, only because it would have been easier and more familiar than trying to put words to all this _awfulness_.

It would have been easier and more familiar, but even she could see that it would have been worse. So, being Undyne, she found herself shouting instead.

“I don’t even know why you want to _be_ in the Royal Guard! It’s _pathetic_ , the way you fight! If you ever met a human, you’d be dead where you stand! Do you really think I want that on my conscience, you, you _idiot!_ ”

 _Stop it!_ a voice in the back of her head was screaming. _Stop it right now!_ This was worse than when she’d called Alphys to ask about the weather, this was so very, very worse.

“A-ARE YOU K-KICKING ME OUT OF TRAINING?”

Oh, hells. He was going to cry he was about to cry she was supposed to be the Underground’s greatest heroine and _she was about to make him cry._ What the heck was she doing, stop it _stop it_ but it almost felt like her mouth had grown a mind of its own.

“Yeah. You’re out of training.” Her throat was as dry as dust, and it hurt to swallow. “Go home.”

She was doing what was best, wasn’t she? She was doing what she had to, right?

Heroes had to make the hard choices. It was more important that he be safe than he be her friend, right? If this was what it took to accomplish that…

In that moment, Undyne would rather have battled a thousand humans than continue looking Papyrus in the face. There weren’t a thousand humans around to battle, but to her very great shame, she still couldn’t continue looking Papyrus in his lost, _upset_ eyes.

She could still _hear_ how hard he was trying not to cry, even as he stepped carefully around her and started trudging away.

He didn’t get nearly out of earshot before she heard him break down entirely and run off, but she could tell it had been a valiant effort all the same.

Fists balled at her side, teeth grinding hard enough to hurt, and none of that enough to distract from the pain in her chest, Undyne went home.

*  *  *

No one made _that_ much of a fuss the next day, of course. They were all good and loyal guardsbeings who understood that they’d signed up for a potentially very difficult job. Besides, Papyrus had been just a guard in training, so some of them hadn’t really even talked to him much. Still, Greater Dog’s ears drooped, and Lesser Dog just didn’t seem to get it. 01 wondered if he would need to reschedule his ice skating trip until he had someone else to show him around.

Nevertheless, part of the reason no one made that much of a fuss was that they knew that even if Papyrus was upset, at least Papyrus was now safe.

Things were still subdued in the training yard that day – maybe that was how things were supposed to be, but Undyne nevertheless could tell from the start that a spark had gone out of things. In an attempt to get her head even a little less twisted up, she skipped going home entirely that day and called up Alphys instead. Alphys had a way of making things make sense, and she kept those _awesome_ noodles in the refrigerator, and Undyne had to give her back a history book anyway, and…

…and somehow, instead of watching anything, they found themselves sitting on the floor by Alphys’ bed, Undyne telling the entire story around great mouthfuls of noodles, Alphys listening attentively while her bowl sat forgotten beside her.

“…and everyone’s looking at me like it’s my fault! Like I’ve done something wrong! No one’s got the guts to say anything to my _face_ , but I know that’s what they think! I _know_ it!”

“Um, h-how do you know it?”

“I just _do!_ ” Undyne stabbed her fork down into her bowl hard enough to send noodles flying. She stabbed her fork down a few more times for good measure. “But it’s _not!_ ”

“W-Well, I guess. After all, um, you are the leader of the Royal Guard. If you don’t think someone belongs there, then maybe they don’t?”

“Exactly! _You_ understand!”

“I mean, I guess I do? I mean, mostly. I mean, I know that you think he doesn’t fit in, but you, um, haven’t really told me…why?”

Undyne froze, her fork halfway down to her bowl.

“What?”

Alphys hastened on, stumbling and stammering, a blush creeping up her cheeks, her tail starting to wag nervously in that way that was normally so ridiculously cute. “What I mean is, you’ve told me that you kicked him out, and that s-some of the other guards aren’t happy about it, but you, um, maybe forgot to tell me _why_ you kicked him out?”

 _Oh. Duh_.

Except, Undyne opened her mouth to do just that, and found herself pausing.

 _He’s too weak_ she could have said, but that would have been wrong. Papyrus was _stupidly_ strong, when you came right down to it.

 _He didn’t fit in_ she could have said, but that would have been wrong. Sure, Greater Dog played a bit rough with him, but Greater Dog played rough with everybody. Lesser Dog had even once let him sit in on a round of Go Fish.

 _I didn’t like having him around_ , she could have said, but that would have been wrong enough to be genuinely offensive to her sensibilities.

Alphys watched Undyne’s internal turmoil apparently show on her face, and visibly wilted beneath the force of it. “It’s okay,” she began. “You d-don’t have to tell me, I know you know what you’re d-doing—”

“He would have gotten hurt.”

All the bluster and cowardly rationale in the world couldn’t hide that that had been the reason at the heart of the matter.

Once she’d admitted that aloud, the words came tumbling out like garbage pouring down the waterfall.

“Sure, he’s tough _now_ , but one day another human is gonna fall down here. And he’s going to go haring off to ‘capture’ it just to…I don’t know. Impress me? Be popular? Who knows, with him? But he can barely stand it when I _look_ at him funny, how’s he going to take it when a human who really knows how to go in for the kill gets him in its sights? He’s _not_ , that’s how. He’s going to die and it…it’ll suck. For me. I mean, for him too, obviously, but…what’s with that look on your face?”

“N-Nothing!” Alphys started visibly with surprise to have the question suddenly turned back around on her, before hastily scrambling to pick up her bowl and resume stuffing her face.

“You don’t eat like that when it’s ‘nothing’.”

“Nothing important?”

“Alphys…”

“It’s just what you s-said just now,” Alphys was visibly trying not to smile, and visibly failing. “It, um, it r-reminded me of one of my favorite episodes of, of ‘Yaya! Gourd Clippers’.”

“I don’t think you’ve shown me that one yet.”

“Oh, it’s _really_ good, we’ll have to start that one after you finish ‘Mighty Maiden Magical Mary’! How is that one, by the way? Do you like it? I thought it kind of dragged in the middle but if you can stick it out, it really picks up and, and _anyway_ , um. ‘Yaya! Gourd Clippers’ is about a r-ragtag military unit that goes on to be the most renowned in the army, and the main character, um, kind of sounds like this Papyrus guy.”

“And he’s still in the military after the first episode?”

“Yes! He almost isn’t, because he’s never killed anyone and the, the commander of the unit doesn’t think he’ll be able to cut it. But he secretly sneaks after them when they go on the move and, and he’s able to spot an ambush before it closes in on them! So then the commander decides to give him a chance and even if he never kills anyone, he does other cool stuff, and, and everyone just likes having him around. And, um, they all learn that’s not a bad thing, to, to just like being around someone, and to not want to hurt anyone.”

“So what you’re saying is that even if he never kills a human, he could be like our team pet?”

“Um, maybe?”

“ _Perfect!_ ”

Indeed, that thought was sufficiently perfect that Undyne leapt to her feet with renewed vigor. In doing so, of course, she knocked her bowl of noodles flying. They both watched it soar through the air in an impressively wide arc, before it splatted against the wall clear on the other side of the room.

“Oops,” Undyne said, after a moment of embarrassment. “Sorry about that. I’ll, um, I’ll clean that up, before I go.”

Fortunately, this was far from the first time she’d gotten overly enthusiastic with her dinner, and so she knew where Alphys kept the mop by heart now.

*  *  *

She remembered that Papyrus lived in Snowdin, with his brother. Undyne hated Snowdin at the best of times, but decided to view the trip as her own personal penance for starting this mess.

Even so, by the time she was halfway down the path by the river, Undyne was hugging herself against her shivering and wishing she’d thought to swing by her house and grab her armor. It didn’t help that it was well and truly whatever passed for night in the Underground anymore. By the time she was most of the way down the path by the river, Undyne was wondering just what she’d do if Papyrus was asleep, or something. Did he ever sleep?

Undyne wound up passing right by the house she needed, at first, though her suspicions grew once she spotted the two mailboxes standing side-by-side. One was stuffed so full that envelopes had spilled out onto the snow, one completely and utterly empty. Sure enough, a quick investigation revealed that the overstuffed one was labeled “Sans” and the dutifully empty one was labelled “Papyrus”.

Biting back a smile, Undyne backtracked to the porch, hastened up the steps, and knocked firmly on the door.

Silence reigned for one minute. Two. She was torn between the urge to just leave and the urge to outright kick the door down, when at last the door solved the problem for her by swinging open.

“oh, hey. it’s the lady who made my brother cry.”

Undyne’s gaze ticked down. A smaller skeleton’s gaze ticked up. The first thing she noticed was that he was wearing carpet slippers. The second thing she noticed was the smile. Skeletons were always smiling, of course, but she got the definite sense that this one wouldn’t be if he had the choice.

Sans stared up at her, not moving so much as a twitch, and Undyne wound up being the one to break their locked gazes first. “Do you greet everyone like that?” she asked, voice dour, fidgeting a little under his stare and his words.

“only if they’re ladies who made my brother cry. it’d be kind of weird if i greeted the kid with the scarf and the big ears two houses down like that, wouldn’t it?”

“Yeah, well, I’m here to…to…”

_Say it. Say it, you coward!_

“…I’m here to apologize for making your brother cry, actually. Can I come in?”

“you could, but he’s not here.”

“ _What_?” Oh, she was _not_ going to believe that she’d come all this way to _Snowdin_ , of all places, for nothing! Not when she’d finally resolved to fix things! “Then where the heck is he?”

“last I checked? probably still out in the woods.”

“What the heck is out there?” As far as she knew, there were only the woods, the teenagers who hung out there, and the big door that never opened. None of which seemed particularly interesting to someone like Papyrus. There were the puzzles, of course, but there had to be easier ways to enjoy a puzzle than trekking all the way out there.

“i think he’s out looking for a human to capture.”

“ _What?!_ ”

“yeah.” Sans shrugged. Beyond that, she couldn’t tell much of what he was thinking. It was, frankly, starting to get a little creepy, especially in contrast to Papyrus. “what else is new?”

“And you let him go?! What if he actually _finds_ one, you idiot? He’ll get _killed!_ ”

“and if he does find one? what do you think _i_  could do?”

“Pull him away? Get him turned around? Something? _Anything_?”

“sure. papyrus gets upset and discouraged because his idol tells him he’s useless to her, and then his brother turns around and tells him he’s useless to her, too. yeah. that’d go over just _swell_.”

Perhaps seeing the look on her face, she thought she saw a glimmer of pity in his eyes. Or at least, the sarcasm in his voice was less biting when he carried on: “look. papyrus…papyrus is good at knowing the difference between ‘living’ and ‘surviving’. definitely better than me. and just because i’m, uh, kind of a coward, myself, i don’t want to take that away from him.” The lights in his eyes dimmed a little, and Undyne felt an unfamiliar shiver race up her spine. She hadn’t even known a skeleton’s eyes could do that. “i don’t want you to take that away from him, either.”

“I get it. I do. I don’t…I don’t want him to lose that, either. I don’t want _anyone_ to have to make that choice. You know?”

She wasn’t sure she did get it, actually, but she knew for sure that she wanted to. Maybe that showed in her voice, because Sans nodded, and suddenly his eyes were something more than dying fireflies in their sockets.

He grinned, and it looked like an actual expression this time.

“i know,” he said. Then: “prove it.”

And he closed the door in her face.

Undyne yelled a few threats through the door, just to let off some steam. This was really turning into a very long night. Sans didn’t answer, of course, and so, in the end, she started off back down the path again to prove it.

*  *  *

The local teenagers were still up and about, in valiant and eternal defiance of the very concept of a bed-time. Undyne heard Ice Cap arguing with Jerry through the trees. She passed by Chilldrake and Snowdrake playing a round of snowdecahedron golf. They waved to her, and she waved back, before carrying on.

She found Papyrus recalibrating the puzzles, as expected. Technically, they were the Royal Guard’s puzzles, but no one attended to them with quite the enthusiasm he did. Puzzles were coming to be seen as somewhat old-fashioned, but neither did anyone want to go through the trouble of cleaning them up, and so they normally left him to it.

She even found him working on the one that consisted of a grand total of two buttons and a bunch of rocks, which a concussed duck could have gotten past at the best of times.

_That nerd._

_That stubborn, goofy, hard-working nerd_.

As she watched him from a short distance away, currently unnoticed with Papyrus deep in his own contemplation, Undyne decided that he’d definitely earned a break. If he wasn’t in the mood to give himself one, she could do something about that, too.

“Hey, Papyrus?”

She gave him just enough time to look up before she pounced, with a cry of _“Snow wrestling!”_ that was loud enough to scare birds from their trees a mile away. The two of them went down hard in the snow, Undyne laughing, Papyrus flailing like a turtle on its back.

“OH GOD _WHA_ T—!”

Undyne shifted herself so that she was sitting on the balls of her feet, rather than directly on his ribcage. She offered the skeleton her biggest, brightest, toothiest smile. “Hey. Whatcha doing?”

It took him a few seconds to think up a reply or, more likely, to remember how to talk. “I AM SEARCHING FOR A HUMAN TO CAPTURE! AND RECALIBRATING THE PUZZLES WHILE I DO IT!”

“Even though I kicked you out of the Royal Guard?”

“ _ESPECIALLY_ BECAUSE YOU KICKED ME OUT OF THE ROYAL GUARD!” His hands clenched into fists. Undyne braced for him to pitch her off, but he didn’t. He was, apparently, just that keyed up for what he said next. “UNDYNE, I, I THINK YOU ARE VERY COOL. AND VERY STRONG. AND I LIKE HANGING OUT WITH YOU A LOT! BUT I ALSO THINK YOU ARE WRONG ABOUT ME! I _AM_ STRONG ENOUGH TO BE IN THE ROYAL GUARD, AND I _KNOW_ I COULD CAPTURE A HUMAN! AND I WILL PROVE IT TO YOU, NO MATTER HOW LONG IT TAKES OR HOW MANY NIGHTS I HAVE TO SPEND OUT HERE LOOKING!”

 _Capture,_ Undyne noted ruefully. _Even now, it’s “capture”, not “kill”._ As though he couldn’t even keep the idea in his head.

But maybe that could be a problem for another day. For now, she only beamed, got off of him, and offered him a hand up.

He took it, and she didn’t even take advantage of the obvious opportunity to flip him over her shoulder and back onto his butt. It had been a long night, but she was in a good mood now.

“Congratulations, Papyrus!” Instead, she patted him hard enough on the back of his spine to make him stagger. “You passed the test!”

“WHAT?”

“The test. That I gave you. To prove yourself worthy to move on to the next step in your training.” The test that she’d made up right this moment on the spot. Or, then again, maybe she hadn’t. If Alphys’ history lessons had taught her anything, it was that sometimes things just worked out for the best and there was no point thinking any further about it. All that mattered was: “And you passed it! Get pumped, punk!”

If there was one thing Papyrus was unfailingly good at, it was getting pumped at the slightest provocation. He punched the air, his eyelights shining almost bright enough to glow. “WOWIE! I PASSED A TEST I DIDN’T EVEN KNOW I WAS TAKING! I MUST HAVE COME A REALLY LONG WAY!”

“Heck yeah you did! The most important part of being in the Royal Guard – heck, the most important part of doing _anything_ – is that when someone tells you that you can’t do something, you yell right back ‘nuh-uh! And now I’m gonna try twice as hard to do it, because you’re stupid and dumb!’” Folding her arms across her chest, Undyne added: “Except don’t say that last part to me. Because I’m not stupid. Or dumb.”

“OF COURSE YOU AREN’T.”

“But the rest of that is totally true.”

“OF COURSE IT IS!”

“And now we’re going to go back to your house and start your next phase of super-secret-special training right now!”

“HOORAY!” He punched the air again, actually leaping a little off his feet in doing so. Undyne mimicked him happily, already feeling the cold banished from her skin as her blood started to pump.

It was nice, having someone around who not only could keep up with her, but was happy to. It was nice, having someone beside her as she chased after a better future, rather than having someone else to lead.

Maybe this wasn’t just a favor to Papyrus. She could admit as much, in the privacy of her own head.

Admitting what she did out loud was rather harder, but Undyne made a valiant go of it, as they started off side-by-side back towards Snowdin. “Hey, uh, Papyrus? I’m sorry I…didn’t actually tell you I was testing you. I, um, forgot.”

“THAT’S OKAY! I FORGET A LOT OF THINGS! WHAT’S IMPORTANT IS THAT YOU REMEMBERED, AND NOW WE’RE FRIENDS AGAIN!”

“Yeah, we are.”

Just like that. Just that simple. Undyne _liked_ it when things were just that simple.

Papyrus was apparently so caught up in happiness and relief that it wasn’t until they were passing over the stone bridge that he asked: “HEY, UNDYNE? WHAT _IS_ MY NEXT PHASE OF SUPER-SECRET-SPECIAL TRAINING?”

“To capture a human, you must first learn to think like a human! And to think like a human, you must first learn to eat like a human! And to _eat_ like a human, you must first learn to _cook_ like a human! Therefore, I am going to teach you how to prepare one of the most secret of all human dishes! It’s called…spaghetti!”

They almost burned the kitchen down a couple of times. But that was only to be expected on a budding chef’s first time out. And even if she had to drag Sans bodily into the kitchen by the back of his hoodie, he still sat down at the kitchen table and tried his brother’s first efforts at cooking.

She could tell it was an effort for him, but he stayed upright and conscious in the end. He even raised a shaking hand to give Papyrus a thumbs-up. All things considered, Undyne couldn’t imagine a night better spent.


End file.
